oxide-code

A terminal-based AI coding assistant written in Rust, inspired by Claude Code.

Overview

oxide-code (ox) is a terminal agent for software engineering tasks. It runs Claude models through the Anthropic API or a compatible gateway to explore codebases, edit files, and run commands, with tool permissions and resumable sessions.

Features

Early development. What works today:

• Terminal UI: streaming output, markdown rendering, syntax-highlighted code blocks, configurable status line, and 5 built-in themes with custom-TOML overrides
• Bare REPL (--no-tui) and headless one-shot mode (-p) for scripts and pipelines
• Agent loop with extended thinking and tool-use round-trip
• Claude Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5, and Haiku 5.5, each with a 1M-token context window and adjustable effort
• File and search tools: read, write, edit, glob, grep, bash
• Tool permissions: auto (default), plan, and yolo modes, allow / deny rules, protected config paths whose edits need approval in auto mode even when an allow rule matches, and a TUI approval prompt for gated calls
• Turn interruption (Esc / Ctrl+C) plus mid-turn queued follow-up prompts that splice into the same turn between tool calls, with double-press Ctrl+C exit confirmation
• Slash commands with /-triggered autocomplete (name and curated-arg modes): /archive, /clear, /compact, /config, /delete, /diff, /effort, /help, /init, /model, /rename, /resume, /status, /theme, /unarchive
• Context compression with manual /compact and default-on auto-compaction
• CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md instruction-file discovery
• Session persistence with JSONL conversation logs, AI-generated titles, listing, archiving, and resume
• Per-session file-change tracking with a Read-before-Edit gate and on-disk drift detection
• Authentication (Anthropic API key, Claude Code login or long-lived OAuth token, LLM gateway bearer token with custom headers) and layered TOML config

Scope

oxide-code follows a few principles:

• Keep the terminal as the primary interface: streaming chat, tool output, and session controls stay keyboard-first.
• Keep context and state visible: model, instructions, compaction, queued prompts, and session identity should be inspectable from the UI.
• Add workflow depth only when it fits the current agent-harness model.

Planned work lives in the open enhancement issues, and themes that span several issues are grouped under epics.

Out of scope for now:

• Editor-specific extensions and a GUI. Editors will be able to connect as ACP clients once #150 ships.
• In-process plugin runtimes, such as WASM modules, dynamic libraries, or embedded scripting.
• Compatibility with Claude Code settings files, hook formats, or permission rule syntax. oxide-code reads CLAUDE.md instructions and Claude Code OAuth credentials, and its own configuration may diverge where its design calls for it.
• Feature parity with Claude Code. Focus on the core workflow first.

Releases follow the versioning policy, and stable releases keep the stability surface compatible within a minor version.

Installation

Four install paths are supported: prebuilt tarball, Homebrew tap, cargo install, and Nix flake. See Installation for the full matrix. The most common one-liners:

# macOS aarch64 (Apple Silicon). Set VERSION to the newest tag on the Releases page.
VERSION=v0.1.0-alpha.2
curl -fsSL "https://github.com/hakula139/oxide-code/releases/download/$VERSION/oxide-code-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz" | tar -xz
sudo mv ox /usr/local/bin/

# Homebrew (Apple Silicon macOS, x86_64 Linux)
brew tap hakula139/oxide-code https://github.com/hakula139/oxide-code
brew install oxide-code

# From source (any Rust-supported platform)
cargo install --git https://github.com/hakula139/oxide-code --locked

# Nix
nix profile install github:hakula139/oxide-code

Usage

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
ox

Documentation

See the user guide for installation, configuration, slash commands, instruction files, sessions, and theming.

Development

AGENTS.md is the contributor entry point for people and coding agents alike. It covers the verification checks and links the conventions for Rust, testing, writing, GitHub, and the development environment.

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Hakula. Licensed under the MIT License.